Programme of events
The conference will take place across three days, 22–24 March 2012, and events will be held at the King’s College London Strand Campus, the Royal Society, and the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons. The programme will consist of:
- Keynote speeches and lectures
- Group sessions and parallel sessions
- Exhibitions of Lister’s instruments drawings and teaching aids
- A guided London walk relating to Lister’s working practices
Learning from Lister: Antisepsis, Safer Surgery, and Global Health
Thursday 22nd March at the Royal Society
6.30pm-7.00pm Registration
7pm Welcome by Professor Sir Peter Morris, Nuffield Professor of Surgery Emeritus, University of Oxford
Opening remarks by Professor Sir Rick Trainor, Principal of King’s College London
7.15pm Hugh Pennington, Emeritus Professor of bacteriology at the University of Aberdeen: ‘Joseph Lister – Revolutionary Conservative, Nonconformist Establishmentarian’
7. 55- 8.35pm Dr Richard Horton, Editor, The Lancet ‘Lister's Global Revolution’
Drinks Reception
Friday 23rd March at the Royal College of Surgeons of England
9.00 Coffee and registration
9.15 Welcome from Professor Norman Williams, President of the Royal College of Surgeons of England
Chair: Dr Rosemary Wall, King’s College London, Secretary of the Society for the Social History of Medicine
9.25 Professor Sir Liam Donaldson, Chairman of the National Patient Safety Agency, formerly Chief Medical Officer for England: ‘Safer Surgery – Simple Concepts, Complex Change’
10.05 The Society for the Social History of Medicine Lecture: Michael Worboys, Professor of the History of Medicine, University of Manchester: ‘Joseph Lister on the Relations of Micro-organisms to Disease’
10.45 Questions/ discussion
11.00 Coffee
11.30 ‘Surgical and obstetric antisepsis’
There will be an opportunity for questions and discussion at the end of each talk.
Parallel session A
Chair: Alistair Lax
Constance Putnam (Concord, Massachussetts) ‘Lister and the Fight Against Sepsis: Predecessors, Priority, and Progress’
Benedek Varga (Budapest) ‘The Myth and Cult of Ignaz Semmelweis: Constructing the History of Science’
Sally Frampton (London) ‘The Peculiarities of the Peritoneum: Antisepsis and Abdominal Surgery, 1860 – 1900’
Parallel session B
Chair: Sam Alberti
Alison Nuttall (Edinburgh) ‘Confining the Problem: Antisepsis and the Management of Puerperal Infection at Edinburgh Royal Maternity Hospital, 1844-1939’
Anne Bergin (Maynooth) ‘Joseph Lister – Saviour of the Lying-in Hospital?’
‘Joseph Lister: the Science and the Man’. A short presentation from the students of the Lister Community School
1.00 Lunch
2.00 Gus McGrouther, Professor of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Research
University of Manchester: ‘Surgical Precision following Lister’
Chair: BrianHurwitz
2.40 Questions/ discussion
3.00 Parallel sessions
There will be an opportunity for questions and discussion at the end of each talk.
Parallel session A
Lister, bacteria, artefacts
Roddy Macsween (Glasgow) ‘Lister: Pathologist’
Ruth Richardson (London) ‘Fermentation as Metaphor: Joseph Lister's Inaugural Lecture at King's College, London 1877’
Sam Alberti (London) ‘Heritage and the Memorialisation of Lister’
Parallel session B
‘Modernities’
Claire Jones (Leeds) ‘An “Aseptic Revolution”? Re-assessing the Role of Medical Advertising in Fin de Siècle Britain’
Roger Kneebone (London) ‘Simulation based surgical re-enactment: an Innovative Methodology’
Julianne Weis (Oxford) ‘Sanitizing Female Genital Cutting: from an Anglo-Sudanese Midwives’ Training School to the WHO’
5.00 Tea
5.30- 6.10 The Lister Hospital Lecture: Jim Connor, John Clinch Professor of Medical Humanities and History of Medicine, Memorial University of Newfoundland: 'Knowledge Transfer Across the Waves: Listerism and Victorian Surgery Beyond Britain'
Chair: Anne Crowther
Lister Dinner 7.00 – 10.30 Weston Room, King’s Maughan Library, Chancery Lane
After Dinner Talk: Professor Thomas Schlich, McGill University
Saturday 24th March at King’s College London
9.00 Coffee
9.15 Welcome by Professor Sir Rick Trainor, Principal of King’s College London
Chair: Brian Hurwitz
9.25 Marguerite Dupree, Professor of Social & Medical History University of Glasgow: ‘Commemoration, Controversy and Collection: Celebrating Lister in London and Scotland’
10.05 The Lister Hospital Lecture: Jennifer Connor, Associate Professor of Medical Humanities, Memorial University of Newfoundland: 'Making Medical Innovation Intelligible: Listerism in Rhetorical Context'
10.45 Discussion and questions
11.05 Coffee
11.30 Parallel sessions
There will be an opportunity for questions and discussion at the end of each talk.
Parallel session A
Lister’s legacy
Chair: Peter Thompson
Rainer Engel (Baltimore) ‘Lister in the USA’
Dirk Shultheiss (Giessen) ‘James Israel (1848-1926): Pioneer of Infectious Disease and Kidney Surgery’
Jane Coutts (Province of Cáceres, Spain) ‘Keeping Lister Alive: Sir William Watson Cheyne´s Campaign to keep Lister's Methods Alive and Understood’
Katie Edwards (London) ‘Cleaning Up: Lister’s Legacy at the Florence Nightingale Museum’
Parallel session B
Lister’s influence inside the operating theatre
Chair: Alistair Lax
Gerard Fitzgerald (Charlottesville, Virginia) ‘War is in the Air: Oswald Hope Robertson, Chemical Germicides, and the Problem of Air Disinfection, 1941-1946’
Bryan Rhodes (Lancaster) ‘Lister’s Legacy - the Evolution of Clean Air Operating Theatres’
Laurens Ceulemans (Leuven) ‘A Brighter Day has Dawned on Surgery’
1.30 Lunch
2.30 ‘Lister’s influence outside the operating theatre’
Chair: Anne-Marie Rafferty
There will be an opportunity for questions and discussion at the end of each talk.
Thomas Schlich (Montreal) ‘Farmer to Industrialist – how Antisepsis Changed the Self-image of Surgeons in Germany’
Rosemary Wall (London) ‘The Role of the Matron in Managing Infection in Late Nineteenth-century London’
Edward R Howard (London) ‘Lister and Experimental Science’
Mary Wilson Carpenter (Kingston, Ontario) ‘A Patient Learns from Lister’
4.30 Tea
4.45 The Lister Institute Lecture: Anne Crowther, Senior Research Fellow in the History of Medicine, University of Glasgow, and Adjunct Professor, in the School of Nursing, University of Adelaide 'Lister and the Empire: a continuing legacy'
Chair: Margeurite Dupree
5.25 Discussion
5.40- 6.00 Closing remarks.
Sunday 25th March
10.00 am Lister walk: ‘Guts, Germs and Glory: Joseph Lister’s London’ with Richard Barnett, Public Engagement Fellow, Wellcome Trust, London (register for this walk on registration at the RCS on 23rd March)